I realize this may be a very narrowly targeted article. How many Technoodling readers play golf? You, you, and … you. Ok, let’s all four of us come over here and talk about the Golfsense Swing Analyzer. The rest of you, go read last week’s news.

Golf is a funny sport. As anyone who’s ever tried their hand at hitting a bucket of balls at a driving range knows, the golf swing is a motion that rarely comes naturally to the uninitiated, even for the athletic among us. Which explains the deluge of golf training tools available on the market, mostly little bits and tubes of plastic meant to mold your contortions into the perfect swing. As a struggling weekend golfer with a fruit salad of swing flaws, I’ve tried lots of them.

The Golfsense system, however, is one of the more impressive ones I’ve ever used. It comes in two pieces: a small plastic sensor about the size of a portable 3G modem (there, non golfer tech geeks, you’re back on familiar ground) and an app that you install on your iOS or Android device. By threading the sensor through the flap of your golf glove, you allow it to measure your hand’s speed, angle, rotation, etc and use those measurements to present you with some interesting data.

Time to take the system to the range! Or to the fairways, or even to your backyard (yes, it works even without a ball).

The sensor pairs with an iPhone, iPad or Android device over Bluetooth. Once paired, a voice will pipe up and tell you that you can go ahead and swing.

So here’s a video that shows what my typical 9 iron swing looks like.

After you swing, you’ll get a bunch of screens that look like this:

Now to the non golfer and average Technoodling reader, all the above screens mean absolutely nothing. But to the golf nut who absolutely positively must dissect his swing down to the last muscle twitch, the above screens are a veritable gold mine of useful information! This isn’t a sports blog, so you’ll just have to trust me on that. It’s awesome stuff.

A funny anecdote to end this review: my third or fourth ever swing with the Golfsense went very badly. Apparently I had neglected to tighten the velcro strap on my golf glove and the centrifugal force of my swing sent the plastic sensor hurtling skyward, over my backyard fence and into the adjoining empty lot. See the graphic below. The sensor tracked its flight path up til it lost contact with the iPad at my feet. It took me a couple of hours, but I eventually found it. Hahah!

And good thing I found it, because I wouldn’t want to have to explain to my fellow editors how I lost my review unit and thus need to fork over the retail price of P5,950 to buy a replacement.

Is it worth that much money? Well, the Golfsense doesn’t see everything about my swing – the fact that my head moves up and down during my backswing (umm – it shouldn’t), nor is it accurate at estimating the distance I hit my clubs (a 143 yard 9 iron? Geez, i wish! Ha, 113 is more like it!) But it still provides a remarkable amount of feedback, and it if you’re a serious golfer looking for a new way to tweak and dissect your swing, it might be worth looking into.

Vic spends entirely too much on gadgets. So rather than try and kick the habit, he decided to become the Reviews Editor of Technoodling. Now, he has a perfectly good excuse. It's not an addiction: it's a job. His favorite noodle: Pappardelle.